Whatever happened to the webzine Revolution SF? All links to
http://www.revolutionsf.com stopped working some months ago, a situation which
persists despite much protest to the site host. However,
http://revolutionsf.com will get you
there....

Neal Stephenson received an approving thumbs-up from
Word magazine (December 2003): 'Neal Stephenson doesn't deal in science
fiction -- what he writes is fiction with science in it.'

R.I.P.Dr Ernest Henry Taves (1916-2003), US psychoanalyst
and co-author of the sceptical The UFO Enigma (1977), died on 16 August
aged 87. His sf stories were published in Galaxy and If from
1969 to 1976. A tiny bibliographical point: he appeared in sf references as
'Ernest Keith Taves', his first Galaxy byline, but later sf story
credits were to 'Ernest Taves' and Galaxy eventually profiled him as
'Ernest H.Taves, M.D.' My thanks to William Contento for sorting that out.

What Colour Were the Yellow Jackets on Your Planet? Terry
Pratchett dropped a hint that he may have originated in an unfamiliar leg of the
Trousers of Time, when reminiscing in the Daily Telegraph (4 Oct) about
his early library reading: 'vast amounts of Gollancz science fiction in those
virulent magenta and purple covers that you could spot across the entire length
of the fiction section.'

Outraged Letters.Phyllis Gotlieb has bad news for J.G.
Ballard (see Runcible 102). 'A National
Geographic expedition found the source of the Amazon in December, 2000. It flows
out of the Andes in southern Peru, from a mountain 18,363 feet high, called
Nevado Mismi. (Information courtesy of Google.) You needn't tell J.G. Ballard if
it will destroy his dream.'

Thog's Masterclass.Life in Ancient Mu Dept. 'Enormous birds
as large as modern air liners were worshipped as symbols of the Old Ones. [...]
Elephants and mastodons grew to a size that rivalled that of the dinosaurs of an
earlier age. And in the sky hung an enormous moon, bluey white in colour, that
counteracted the earth's gravity and caused the tremendous growth of all the
living creatures of Mu.' (Colin Wilson, The Philosopher's Stone, 1969)